Didn't see THAT coming... Friday box office rundown.

Consider it felt.

There are surprises and there they are surprises... Defying even the most optimistic predictions, Warner Bros' R-rated comedy The Hangover opened at number 01 with a stunning $16.5 million. Riding a wave of positive reviews and countless pre-release word of mouth screenings (allegedly over 300), the Todd Phillips comeback project is on track to gross between $42 million (2.5x weekend multiplier) and $53 million (3.25x multiplier). Obviously the total is going to be somewhere in between, but I fully expect Warner Bros to brag about a $50 million weekend estimate (3x) on Sunday before releasing a slightly lower final number on Monday. Either way, this will likely be the second highest R-rated comedy opening weekend of all-time, behind the $56 million Sex & The City opening a little over a year ago. This is a near-miraculous achievement that will likely turn Bradley Cooper into a full-fledged leading man (his chances of being cast as Hal Jordon in Warner Bros' Green Lantern just went way up). Even if it doesn't end up number one for the weekend, this will be the story that everyone is talking about on Monday.

For some perspective, this creamed the $10 million opening day of The Wedding Crashers and made almost as much in one day as the last several Judd Apatow or Paul Rudd vehicles made in their opening weekends (I'm thinking the $18 million-ish debuts of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I Love You Man, and Role Models). It is the 11th biggest R-rated opening day of all time, and will likely find itself at least in the top twenty for R-rated openings. We'll know more tomorrow, where we see if it played like a general audiences hit or a young-kid-skewed front loader. Either way, this has to be wonderful news for the beleaguered Warner Bros, which has seen middling results from major investments (Watchmen and Terminator: Salvation) and outright flops from more low budget efforts (Observe and Report). Pardon the speculation at this early stage, but with the rest of June being relatively light on major projects until June 24th, The Hangover has a good shot at being the second-highest-grossing film of June, behind Transformers 2.

Ironically, despite all the huzzahs, the film may have to settle for number two this weekend. After all, Pixar's Up dropped just 38% from last Friday, so we'll have a pretty tight race for the top spot. Grossing $13.5 million and crossing the $100 million mark on its eighth day, the Pixar masterpiece is playing more like Finding Nemo than Ratatouille, Cars, or Wall-E. It's $106 million total is just $3 million behind the fish fable at a similar juncture, and its $13.5 million second Friday is actually about $1 million ahead of Finding Nemo, despite opening to $2 million less last weekend. A second-weekend total of at least $42 million should come about (Finding Nemo had $46 million in weekend two), so regardless of which film is number one, both are smashing success stories.

And that's where the good news more or less ends. Land of the Lost came in at third place, with $7.7 million. This will fall right into the general realm of Will Ferrell comedies, which is just fine except the film cost $100 million to make. The problems for this one were numerous. It was sold as a family-friendly adaptation of a family friendly TV series that just happened to star Will Ferrell. But, in reality, it was a hard PG-13 Will Ferrell comedy that just happened to be an adaptation of a kid-friendly TV show. Fair enough, but Will Ferrell comedies aren't expected to be blockbusters, and they aren't budgeted as such. The budget on this one was so large that is basically HAD to play like Talladega Nights ($147 million) or Elf ($173 million) to make any money. Will Ferrell's last three comedies, Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, and Step-Brothers, grossed $118 million, $33 million, and $100 million respectively. What exactly made Universal think that this was going to vastly exceed those numbers, especially when they had nothing to sell EXCEPT Will Ferrell and a pissed-off T-rex?

Next in the 'Universal is stupid' category is Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell. Despite rapturous reviews, this seemingly audience-pleasing horror flick dropped 61% from Friday to Friday. There is absolutely no excuse for a horror film this entertaining to not even approach the numbers of the various Screen Gem crap fests. Last week's soft opening weekend was likely due to Universal's ad campaign, which spent its money selling the film to the geeks that had already bought tickets. But there would be no recovery this weekend as The Hangover stole all of the teen/college audience that would have theoretically sampled the horror film that they missed last weekend. Even if word of mouth isn't as hot as I would have presumed, the sad fact is that this one will likely earn less overall than the audience-loathed Friday the 13th earned in its opening weekend. And we wonder why today's horror is nothing but Asian remakes and 80s slasher reboots.

More to come once the weekend numbers roll in.

Scott Mendelson